Vermont Monitoring Cooperative Newsletters

Catch up on the latest news from the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative, including updates on the monitoring data and research occurring around the state, highlights of new data added to the database, and cooperator interviews.

VMC's last stand-alone newsletter features a profile of long-time cooperator Tom Simmons, details of the newly expanded forest health monitoring network VMC is helping to establish and the status of our strategic planning process. In addition, we are announcing our future forum for VMC news, ecoNEWS VT, a service VMC helped establish with Lake Champlain Sea Grant and other partners. We'll see you there!

Read a great interview with John Austin from Vermont Fish and Wildlife, updates on the transition of VMC leadership from Larry Forcier to Jen Pontius, the beginnings of a Vermont-specific portal to Forest Inventory and Analysis data, and a peek at windspeed patterns around the lake this summer.

August has arrived, and so has the VMC summer newsletter. Read our farewell to retiring VMC cooperator Nancy Burt, review 20 years of VMC involvement at the Lye Brook Wilderness Area, and learn what VTFPR’s Director of Forests Steve Sinclair has to say about the role VMC can play in connecting communities to forest ecosystems. As a bonus, Mim Pendleton gives you a sense just how soggy May and June really were by delving into the precipitation record at Proctor Maple Research.

The latest newsletter from the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative is online. Read a great interview with longtime VMC Cooperator Barbara Burns, learn about how a new air quality sensor at Proctor Maple can help measure aquatic acidification, meet some new faces at VMC, and find out what improvements are around the corner for VMC's database and website.

Catch up with longtime cooperator and amphibian advocate Jim Andrews , read three great interviews; Kathy Decker, District Forestry Manager at FPR, Kimberly Wallin, USFS /RSENR and VMC advisory Committee member, and Robert Paquin, State Executive Director of the USDA Farm Service Agency who was instrumental in the founding of the VMC.

Read a great article about using students in service learning to survey Burlington’s urban forest using i-Tree Eco software, check in on how the Vermont Center for Ecostudies uses Bicknell’s Thrush to monitor sensitive mountains habitats and enjoy an interview of Jennifer Pontius, USFS /RSENR and VMC Advisory committee member. Also, meet our new Web and Data Manager, Aaron Rice.

Read a thoughtful essay by Lawrence Forcier, VMC Principle Investigator, see how sources of pollution are pinpointed using back-trajectories and in this issue the VMC starts its interview feature of Steering and Advisory Committee members leading off with Ed O’Leary and Rich Poirot. The program from the 2010 VMC annual Meeting is here as well.

In this issue, Lawrence Forcier introduces himself as acting VMC Program Director after some personnel and structural changes and charts the way forward with a bold collaborative project, the AIRMoN site at Underhill is explored and we get an in-depth look at the VMC’s meteorological stations from Carl Waite and Dick Furbush with the agenda from our 2008 Annual Meeting rounding it out.

VMC Director Jen Jenkins asks for feedback from VMC stakeholders, the Lake Champlain meteorological stations are an internet phenom, an excellent new field lab is completed at the Underhill air quality site and two articles from FPR bring us up to date on forest health issues and earlier bud break. There’s a web and data update and the agenda from the 2007 Annual Meeting.

Jen Jenkins joins the VMC, there’s a monitoring update from Sean Lawson and there’s an in-depth article on Dr. Timothy Perkins of the Proctor Maple Research Center who is this issue’s featured VMC cooperator. Some mercury deposition data collected at the Underhill air quality site completes this issue.

This newsletter is packed with research and monitoring articles; ranging from mercury pollution from the atmosphere to an article by UVM soil scientist Don Ross. Sean Lawson becomes Interim Director of the VMC and the forest canopy tower is back!